Considering their each individual wit, one could only imagine what a force of comic nature Carrie Fisher and Dan Aykroyd would have been. And for a brief, beautiful time in the '80s, after meeting when she hosted Saturday Night Live, the two fell in love on the set of The Blues Brothers. They took "blood tests for compatibility from an East Indian female doctor," Debbie Reynolds would cook for the young couple, and as Aykroyd describes in a touching tribute in Empire, Fisher would make fun of his chin.
They drove fast cars and motorcycles through Beverly Hills; they hung out with sons and daughters of famous people. They listened to Christmas music and did LSD at legendary estates in Lake Tahoe. A particularly sweet passage reads:
Contemplating marriage, I gave Carrie a sapphire ring and subsequently in the romance she gave me a Donald Roller Wilson oil painting of a monkey in a blue dress next to a tiny floating pencil, which I kept for years until it began to frighten my children. One of the most brilliant and hilarious minds of our eon, Carrie would say things like: "I love tiny babies. When they cry they turn red and look like screaming tomatoes." OR "This romance is finished the second you let out even a threep. I'll be sick for a year." AND "You have a jawline, hold your chin up otherwise you look like a tuna." From then on I would identify myself on the phone as Tuna Neck.
Then it ended as breathlessly as it began. As Aykroyd writes, "She was also in love with Paul Simon. She married him, but I hope she kept my ring."
